Yann woke up the next morning and frowned when he looked up at the surface in front of his face. He wasn’t in his bed in his room in the Black Watch’s house.

Omer coughed right next to him and startled Yann into raising his head and shoulders partway off the floor. He found himself in a tent packed with three other Watchmen.

He remembered everything—everything that happened since the Watch left Middleborough—everything that happened in all the Layers since then—everything that happened between him, Eliska, his father, and all the other Watchmen.

Barsali lay on Omer’s other side. Rien lay against Yann’s other side. Barsali and Rien were still sound asleep.

Omer twisted in place trying to get comfortable. He frowned to himself and then his hard, dark eyes snapped open.

They sliced to Yann sitting partway up. Yann watched the wheels turning in Omer’s head as he remembered everything, too. None of them would ever forget it.

Just then, Yann heard his father talking to two men outside. One of them was Wesh. Then Yann heard Eliska and another woman join in the conversation.

Yann and Omer exchanged one more glance. Then both men got up as carefully as possible so they wouldn’t disturb Barsali and Rien.

Yann and Omer went outside. Wesh, Yvan, Eliska, and a bunch of gypsies stood together in the trees at a distance from the gypsy camp.

It looked different in daylight. The sunshine streaming through the treetops gave the camp a stark, rough, brutal atmosphere. It clashed with the air of enchanted mystery from last night.

Niyazi, Niels, and Vidal stood off to one side listening to that conversation. That left only Barsali and Rien out of the loop.

Two gypsy women joined Wesh, Ando, Eliska, and Yvan. The women didn’t have a problem interjecting their opinions.

“We’re too close to the edge,” one of the gypsy women insisted. “We have to move closer to the center—away from the Dark Layers outside.”

“Moving closer to the center will bring us closer to the bandits,” Ando replied. “We’re safer here.”

“The edge could crumble and take all of you,” Eliska told him. “We’ll go with you in case you meet any bandits. We’re going that way ourselves. These Watchmen want to find a town that needs the Black Watch.”

Ando snorted. “No one in the Ancestral Empire needs the Black Watch.”

“Then maybe they need fighting men,” Yvan suggested. “We can always change our clothes.”

Ando grinned at him, but just then, some movement at the edge of the trees caught all their attention. They turned that way and Yann saw what they were looking at.

The trees shuddered and the leaves parted to show a yawning chasm of wild magic swirling, churning, and seething just beyond the edge of the forest.

The travelers’ group hadn’t made it more than fifteen feet from the spot where Eliska used that white light to get them to the Ancestral Empire. The boundary between the Island and the Layers beyond must be breaking down.

Yann didn’t understand how all this worked. He didn’t need to. Wesh and Eliska understood it well enough. If she said they had to move inland, that was good enough for Yann.

He wasn’t the one making the decisions on behalf of the Watch, though.

Yvan turned away from the conversation and saw Yann and the others standing there listening. “Wake up Barsali and Rien,” Yvan ordered. “We’re moving out.”

“Are we moving out on our own or with them?” Omer asked.

Yvan shot a flinty glance over his shoulder. “It doesn’t matter. We’re moving out either way. We can’t stay here.”

Yann hustled back to the tent and shook the other two awake. Barsali sat up right away, rubbed his face to wake himself up, and nodded when he remembered where he was and why.

Rien grumbled, shut his eyes, and rolled onto his other side. “Leave me alone, boy,” he snarled.

“You better get up before Father finds you,” Yann told him. “He was the one who sent me to wake you up. If he comes looking for you, he’ll give you the worst whipping you ever had.”

Rien grumbled under his breath again and didn’t move. Barsali made significant eye contact with Yann and they both left Rien where he was.

Yann didn’t want to be anywhere nearby when Yvan found Rien lounging in his tent.

Barsali must have been thinking the same thing because they both got as far away from the tent as they could before Yvan realized what was going on.

Fortunately for everyone, Rien came to his senses and emerged only a few seconds later. He ran his fingers through his hair and went about his business as if he’d never even considered disobeying his Watch Commander’s order.

The three of them left the tent and discovered the gypsies arming the Watchmen. Ando opened a large wooden trunk set against one of the tents.

The trunk was almost as big as the tent itself. Yann didn’t see how these people could carry a trunk that size on their travels.

Ando pried back the lid and pulled out a massive battle axe. “This is about your size….” He handed it to Barsali.

He went through the group sizing up each Watchman and handing him a weapon that Ando judged appropriate for each person.

He came to Yann last. Ando’s keen eye darted up and down Yann’s body. “What will you take, boy? What can you use well?”

Yann’s eyes dipped to the contents of the trunk. Swords, axes, maces, clubs, and daggers lay piled inside.

“I’ll take that glaive if no one else is using it,” Yann replied.

Ando burst into a grin, pulled out the glaive, and tossed it to him. Yann caught it and weighed it in his hands. Damn, it felt good to hold a weapon again!

All the Watchmen adjusted their grips on their weapons.

“Each of you take a second one while you’re at it,” Ando told them. “We’ll need them.”

He stepped away and the Watchmen gathered around all talking at once. Yann was too busy examining his new glaive to care what the others left behind for him after they finished.

The tense excitement in their voices infected his blood. They were all going back into battle—armed this time.

Their eyes glistened with fire when they finally turned away from the trunk. They weren’t so helpless now.

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Yann got himself two short daggers from the trunk, stuck one in his belt and the other in his boot, and walked away to join the rest of the Watch.

He couldn’t stop touching and staring at his glaive. It felt perfect—almost like a living thing quivering in his hands.

The others murmured in excited whispers while they all accustomed themselves to their new weapons.

Yann spotted Eliska standing off to one side. She leaned on her staff while she watched the Watchmen. She didn’t comment on their change in attitude.

Yvan kept talking away to Wesh and Ando the whole time. He went to the trunk last, got himself an axe and a longsword, and went through the same process of checking their weight, swinging them, and examining every detail of their edges and construction.

His expression changed when he finally faced the other Watchmen. He burst into a glowing grin for a split second before he fought it down and tried to force himself to get serious.

“We’re moving out with the gypsies,” he announced. “We’ll travel with magic-users and Watchmen outside the column and imps, women, and children inside.”

Those words set off another explosive reaction in the Watchmen. They didn’t show it on the outside, but the charge of energy running through them spiked off the charts. They were back in their element fighting overwhelming forces to protect those less able to defend themselves.

The Watch had to wait a long time for the gypsies to strike their camp. The women had to organize all the children, fold up the tents, and pack everything into more gigantic trunks.

Yann really didn’t see how they would carry all this stuff, especially not with the party’s strongest men stationed outside the van to defend everyone in case of trouble.

The sun climbed to the top of the trees before the gypsies finally got ready to leave.

Just before Ando gave the order to move out, one of the gypsy women who’d been talking to Wesh and Yvan earlier went around the area and stopped in front of each trunk.

She raised her hand, flexed her fingertips together, and then burst them apart over each trunk.

Yann didn’t see anything unusual happen, but she must have magicked them. Each one floated off the ground and hovered there a couple of feet above the spot where it had just been sitting.

Ando called everyone to move out and the company filed through the trees to the nearest road.

The floating trunks followed of their own accord. They bobbed at the same height off the ground. No one had to direct them or even pay attention to them.

Dozens of trunks drifted and hovered behind the column on the way out into the open.

The Watchmen joined Wesh, Eliska, and a group of gypsy magic-users. They formed a loose circle around all the rest of the gypsies at the center.

The trunks stayed behind the party. No matter how fast or slow the column traveled, the trunks always stayed the same distance away.

That would turn out to be important if any bandits attacked the group. Yann didn’t want a bunch of wayward magical trunks getting in the way while he tried to fight someone.

The forest edge sat five hundred yards away from the road. The road wound over gentle countryside and vanished into the distance.

The landscape reminded Yann in an unsettling way of the Layer Eliska had guided the party through last night. The two landscapes looked almost identical, but this one didn’t keep coming to life and changing into something else every few seconds—or every second.

The walk started out pleasantly enough. The gypsies chatted to each other. Some even laughed. No one made too much effort to keep the children confined to the protective center.

Yann didn’t want to let his guard down in this bizarre landscape. The fact that it looked normal seemed to fool him into relaxing.

That was its evil nature. Just when he thought he understood where he was and how it worked, everything changed.

The other Watchmen stayed alert and wary the whole time, too. They stayed much more alert and wary than the gypsies did.

Even the gypsies who armed themselves in the outer protective circle didn’t keep an eye on the surroundings as well as they should have.

Yann supposed they didn’t need to if nothing was going to happen.

He didn’t put his glaive down. Where would the next attack come from?

If he ever felt the slightest temptation to lower his guard, he only had to look at Eliska for confirmation. She stayed alert and wary, too.

She held her staff in front of her with both hands exactly the same way all the Watchmen held their weapons. She didn’t talk and laugh with the gypsies.

Some of the gypsies tried to engage her in conversation a few times. She gave them short, blunt answers over her shoulder without taking her eyes off the countryside.

The party traveled for over an hour, climbed low hills and down the other sides, and crossed a few miles of farmland.

“How far are we going?” Niyazi asked Yvan in an undertone.

“However far we have to go to get away from the edge of the Island,” Yvan replied under his breath. “The gypsies think it’s dangerous—and Wesh and Eliska agree with them.”

The party climbed another swell. A large town covered most of the horizon in the distance. Towers rose out of the carpet of house roofs.

“We can stop there,” Ando decided. “The townsfolk will be able to tell us how stable this part of the Island is. Then we’ll understand better whether it’s safe to stay.”

No one argued with that. The party climbed down the other side of the rise.

Yann would have liked to pick up the pace. He wanted to get out of the wilderness and back behind walls with other people.

The sight of the town so close turned the gypsies’ interactions into something like a celebration. Their mood lightened even more—which only caused an opposite reaction in the Watchmen.

The sense of impending doom became oppressive. Eliska jumped out of her skin every time someone laughed. That sound grated on Yann’s nerves.

The group made it halfway across the open countryside before disaster struck. It started with clouds forming in the sky. They darkened the sunshine and the wind picked up.

Eliska’s hair tossed in the wind. Her eyes snapped more dangerously in all directions trying to see something.

“It’s happening!” Wesh yelled to Ando. “The Dark is overtaking us!”

“That’s impossible!” Ando called back. “We’re too far away from the edge.”

“The edge must be crumbling! It’s caving in on us!”

Ando looked around. “I don’t see anything.”

Yann didn’t see anything, either, but right then, Eliska spun backward, stepped out of line, stopped walking, and brandished her staff behind the party.

There was nothing there but the floating trunks. They kept following the gypsies.

Yann stepped out of line and crossed to her side. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “What do you see?”

She started to shake her head when a tidal wave of Darkness swept the landscape from behind. It rushed along the ground in shadowy wisps.

Those wisps didn’t look like anything at first, but they built to a solid mass of shadow farther away.

The Darkness obliterated the landscape through which the party just passed. The earth fell away and dissolved to join the blackness covering everything.

The shadowy vapors swooped down on the party impossibly fast, overtook the trunks, and would have consumed everyone in the same wave.

Yann tensed for the inevitable. He wouldn’t be able to fight this with a glaive or any other kind of weapon.

Eliska reacted lightning quick, stabbed her staff down into the ground, and set off some kind of shockwave through the Darkness.

A blast radiated outward from the point of impact. A ring of energy surrounded the group, but the Darkness kept coming.

It flowed around Eliska’s blast and overran the gypsies. For some reason, her attack protected the Watchmen and Wesh but left the gypsies exposed.

The Darkness flooded the party and transformed the gypsies into Darklings before Yann’s eyes.

They erupted out of their skins, burst to enormous heights, and changed into fanged monsters covered with whipping tentacles. Even the children changed.

“RUN!!” Eliska roared. “Get to the town! Go, Yann!”

He would have stayed behind to help her, but she took her hand off her staff just long enough to shove him away.

Even then, he had to stagger between dozens of Darklings to continue down the road toward the town.

Darkness enveloped everything. The wind built to a howling, shrieking tempest.

Yann stumbled into Wesh. The other Watchmen raced past him trying to get to the town before the Darklings caught up with them.

Wesh stayed where he was to confront the Darklings, but in the end, he turned tail and ran for it, too.

Eliska planted herself in the road between the Darklings and the fleeing Watchmen.

Yann didn’t see what she did. Blast after blast echoed across the crumbling landscape behind him.

Explosions of light, noise, and pounding impacts resounded through the ground and through the air getting farther away the farther he ran.

The Watchmen ran for five minutes before they got to the edge of that Dark wave. It kept advancing toward the town in the distance. Not even that would be safe if something didn’t stop the collapse.

Eliska caught up with the men a few seconds later. Sweat drenched her face and hair. She gasped for air so badly that she couldn’t talk to explain what she did to the Darklings. Yann didn’t want to know.

The town’s outer protective walls became more visible as the group got closer. Armed men lined the wall. They all brought up their weapons when they saw the party coming in at a dead run.

Before anyone could act on either side, the Dark wave overtook the Watchmen and kept rushing in an unbroken flow toward the town.

Yann’s spirits sank when he saw all that Darkness building to an unstoppable torrent. Nothing could save that town.

His instincts kept him running toward it when he already knew it was hopeless. He kept running out of sheer lack of anything else to do.

The Darkness swallowed him, Eliska, Wesh, and all the other Watchmen. The ground beneath his feet disintegrated and evaporated in a whirlwind of splinters, gravel, and spinning clumps of turf.

He soared off into empty space, but not before the Dark wave washed over the walls, took out all those men, and engulfed the town.

End of Chapter 12.